Rather than allow all participants in a teleconference to be heard simultaneously, many teleconference voice switches allow only one person at a time to be heard by the others. In a typical implementation, the voice switch will give control in the voice channel to the first individual that it “hears” speaking after a pause in the conversation. Individuals who are on long-latency connections, e.g., individuals who are overseas or individuals using a cell phone, are at a disadvantage because they hear a pause in the conversation only after it is heard by the people who are on short-latency connections. To make matters worse, even if long-latency and short-latency people begin speaking at exactly the same time, the switch will give control of the audio to the short-latency user because he or she will be identified by the switch as having been first-in-line.
Some teleconferencing systems allow the host to grant control of the audio channel to specific individuals. Furthermore, in some teleconference bridges, it is possible to break-through the voice switch by pressing one of the keys on the dial pad. An audio tone will be heard by others on the bridge, alerting them that someone in the conference wishes to speak.
In even further conference environments that support media in addition to voice, such as AVAYAs'® Meeting Exchange, it is possible to signal via a non-voice channel that the ability to speak is being requested. In other teleconference configurations, it is possible to establish a queue that determines the order in which people are permitted to speak.